Matsuhiro at Chirobe-Mura

Extreme Origami

2009-08-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

HOLY CRAP!

I had no idea you can make something like this with single piece of paper...

this was constructed over 40 hours spread out to over several months.

Here is a link to the original post on this:
http://www.neatorama.com/2006/09/03/extreme-origami/

The person who made this dragon is Satoshi Kamiya. He is in his 20's and he is a pro origami artist as I understand. Here is the video of this guy. Start from 4:30 and see. You will be blown away!

Here is another video of his works.

He has a book out on but it is sold only in Japan... too bad.

I am just speechless...

Bump in my backyard

2009-08-28T23:52:00.000-07:00

So I made this "bump" in my backyard today.

I got shit load of dart that I don't need, so I pilled them on a section of my backyarad.

Here is the "before" picture:

Then the "after picture"

Then I went and got bunch of sod.

Then I covered this bump with the sod.

I need to to name this bump... not sure what I am going to call it, Probably something very boring like "Grass Mountain".

Any good ideas?

Let me know.

Bilingual dog

2009-08-28T07:21:00.000-07:00

I trained my dog to be a bilingual dog.

We speak Japanese to the dog at home but he has to go to vet or stay at kennel from time to time and understanding English is very much needed in those places. So, we decided to train him to be bilingual.

The result was very successful!

What you do is have him learn your hand signals when you are training your dog for the first language. Once your dog is done with the first language, you can apply the same gestures but use another language.

Here is the youtube video of our bilingual dog, Koko.

Enjoy!

Made planters

2009-08-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

I made 3 planters today out of pressure treated woods.

You just cut them and nail them together and make rectangle.

Than add another 2x4, so you have place to sit or put your hand to.

Put water proof paper inside. Ones that you use for roofing and such.

Then you are done.

I made 3 of these, placed them and got dart for them as well.

Dumped some dart in there and planted what was growing on the ground.

The purple object in the back of the picture....Ghost?

Nahhh. It's my wife but she did not want to be in the picture.

I will be making fence and fence doors next.

Attaching doors

2009-08-25T22:06:00.000-07:00

Since I am done with carpet, I've moved onto attaching doors.

What I am attaching are the foldable doors, like the ones you see for closet.

The first thing you do is to attach a rail on the top. There are 2 metal pieces that go on the floor, which would hold the low end of the doors. (forgot to take pictures)

I attached right side first.

Once you know how to do this, the second one is super easy, I attached it on 5 minutes.

The last remaining piece are the moldings, and I will be completely done!

Carpeting

2009-08-22T10:31:00.001-07:00

Now that I am completely done with the walls, I've installed carpet today.

First thing you do is to place tackless strips. It has bunch of nails sticking out. You hook your carpet to this.

Nailing the strips.

All done!

I was telling my wife that it must hurt like hell and probably JUMP if you STEP on this...

Then

We stepped on it.

It was indeed very painful that we both

JUMPED.

Then install carpet pad. All you have to do is just staple them with tucker.

Then you install carpet on this and cut off any excess.

All done!

Lastly, install ending to the entrance.

I am all done now!

I forget to take the picture of the overview.

Will install doors next.

2009-08-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

Finally done with the partition wall!

YES!!

After I was done with the joint compound, then I applied first coat of paint.

My family members are helpful only when it looks to be fun.

Since I wanted rough surface, I got this spray compound.

By spraying your wall with this thing, you can add rough texture to your wall.

This is how the wall looks like with this compound sprayed on the wall:

Koko playing with the spray cap.

Repainted the wall after I was done spraying this thing.

I am DONE!!

The outlet that I've patched up.

Looking from inside the new room:

From the "usual" angle:

Done with the walls now. Moving onto carpeting.

Joint compound.

2009-08-19T21:49:00.000-07:00

Now that I am done with installing all the drywalls, I am onto applying joint compound to hide all the drywall joints.

What you do is to put the compound to the joint with mud knife, then put joint tape on the mud, and then reapply joint compound with mud knife again.

You got to do this neatly or the drywall joints will stand out afterwords.

This is what the wall looked like as of last night.

This is what it looks like now.

Also patched up the hole I created by moving the power outlets.

Here you go.

I am finally starting to a light at the end of the tunnel.

What's left is to paint and to add doors to the opening.

Insulation

2009-08-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

So I finally finished the partition wall today.

I've installed insulation and nailed all the remaining drywalls today.

So it looked something like this the last time but I installed the insulation first.

Since the "push & stick" insulation did not stick, I got rid of grass wools and made the space to staple to the posts.

Then covered the whole area with the drywall.

Done for the day!

Moving onto applying joint compound.

Drywall

2009-08-17T16:37:00.000-07:00

So I attached rest of the drywall today. This was time consuming but was easy.

Here is what it looks like now.

It does look like wall now.

So the next thing is to install insulation.

Here you go.

According to the package, it requires no tuckering. Supposedly it just stick to the wall as you press this against the wall.

Well...

Talk about false advertisement.

It does not.

But I tried anyway and this is what it looked like.

This sticks maybe for 10 seconds, if that.

I will do the rest of the work tomorrow.

2009-08-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

I made decent progress on my partition wall today.

I added 2x4s to the spots where I will be installing doors in the end. The hight of the vertical ones are the height of the doors to be installed, and I added another horizontal bar to it.

Here is what it looks like.

Here is the closer look.

Then I added 2 more support posts to this.

The first one.

... and the second one.

This really looks like wall now.

I had some left over dry walls, so I nailed it also.

But I ran out of drywalls, so I went to get some.
But I am all by myself.

Drywalls are Heavy!!

They are 4" x 8" each and weighs 60lbs.

I baught 6 of them and loaded onto my truck and got them off to my garage. I thought I'd just die. I am only 5"6 and weighs 140. This was just too much.

I will start nailing these drywalls starting tomorrow.

PS:
Get a buddy if you are to buy drywalls.

Koko, the digger

2009-08-14T22:48:00.000-07:00

Our dog Koko, decided to dig today. and boy, he did dig alright.

Have a look. Enjoy!

Partition wall - Day 2

2009-08-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

Today, I installed only 2 posts for the partition wall. orz..

(BTW, when you type "orz..." it looks like someone is on his hands and knees and crying, doesn't it?)

As I was going over my plan in my head, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to take the thickness of drywalls to be installed.

So first thing I did was to fix it. I shorten the sole plates I've installed the day before with my chisel. I had to do this both on right and left sole plate, What a hassle.

Then I marked where the studs are going to be. But it was easier said than done when you are to do this all by yourself.

Then I got the studs up and held it with clamps.

Then nailed it with 16d nails.

I did the same thing to the other side and was done for the day.

Since this is a very crucial part, I am happy that it went well, though I did not make whole a lot of progress. More on the walls tomorrow.

Throwing my junk away

2009-08-12T20:09:00.000-07:00

Well, it is good that I am onto walls, but I got so much scrap woods to throw away now.

So I decided to spend a day on throwing this away.

First, I moved all the junk to the front of my garage.

Then I sliced them to smaller pieces and pilled them up on my truck.

I had 2 truck full of junk to throw away!

I did not know I can carry so much on my short truck bed.

I was able to find a waste yard that takes this for $11.5.

But the waste yard was STINKY!!

But I got to say this was really good experience.

I now have much better sense of appreciation to the people who do all the dirty work for the society.

If you have huge pile of junk to throw away, I highly recommend this place.

Mission Trail Waste Systems
1313 Memorex Dr
Santa Clara, CA 95050
408-727-5365

The guys there very are helpful and friendly. Thanks bunch!

Building a partition wall - Day 1

2009-08-11T20:36:00.000-07:00

Now I am onto building a partition wall. I don't mean the partition walls that you see the office cubicles. but I am talking about a regular wall which is not load bearing.

So I got bunch of 2 x 4's and cut them in appropriate sizes and started nailing them onto the ceiling.

Since I am doing this entirely by myself without any assistant, even measuring distance was a headache. I had to tape up one end of my measure and take measure, then move onto next section... extremely time consuming.

When I was nailing this long 2x4 to the ceiling, I had to hold one end of it with another 2x4, life up the other end with my hand and nail it. Boy. It was difficult.

It went something like this.

There is a part where it is not perpendicular to the floor.

Once I am done with the ceiling, I moved onto the floor. I dropped a line from the ceiling to decide exactly how far the walls are going to extend out from both side of the room, and marked them on the floor.

Then I cut the 2x4's to the appropriate sizes and nailed them down to the floor.

Then the walls.

You need to use 16d nails to do this...

but they are ALL slightly bent. This is all brand new.

WTF?

Anyway, I got all 4 sides done.

I am done for the day. Will build frames here tomorrow.

Working on walls

2009-08-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

Now that I am done with the floor, I just added drywalls to the bottom half of the left and right walls.
Now this room actually look more like room.

This is before:

after Dry walls are attached,

I will now build partition walls.

Maru, Extremely cute cat

2009-08-07T23:33:00.000-07:00

I normally go for dogs but this cat is way too cute. Never seen anything like it!

2009-08-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Now that the floor is pretty much level, I am ready to install plywood to create rough floor surface here.

The first thing I did was to place this cement board called "Wonder Board". There is nothing wonderful about this "Wonder Board". It is heavy, stinky, and cracks easily. I wish if I didn't use this product, I should have put another coat of self-leveling compound.

This is what its look like↓

The I placed very think plywood on the top of it.

The next thing I did is to anchor the plywood down to the concrete floor. What you need here is an impact driver to drill holes to the concrete floor.

It was reeeeeally hard and reeeeealy laud.

My ears were ringing for a long while after I did this.

Not only that but my dog freaked out and kept barking the whole time.

Here is the impact driver.

Here are the anchor bolts。

By the time I finished all the work, it was well after 8:00pm.

I played quite a bit with Koko on the new floor.

I made a huge progress today.

Good day, I must say.

Leveling the floor

2009-08-06T11:37:00.001-07:00

Now that the floor is removed, I worked on building a new floor on the concrete surface. The first thing I did is to remove the anchors that were left on the concrete. I was able to remove all of them with crowbar after some work, except one.

I worked on it with my crowbar for good 15 minutes, It wiggles but just does not come off!

This is me slamming on the crowbar with a hummer, hoping that this would get the anchor out.

Eventually, I just gave up and glided off the anchor. I should have done that in the first place.

Then removed the drywalls that were blow where the floor level used to be. These walls are load bearing walls, so there should be thick plywood instead of drywall. What up with this? So I cut out plywood to the appropriate size and nails them there.

Here is what the wall looked like with the unnecessary drywall.

Also moved the location of the power outlets along the way.

This is how it looks like with the plywood in place.

By now, I was so beat, so I stopped working on this for the day.

---------------------------------------------
On the following day, I leveled the concrete floor.

Can you tell that this is not level from this picture?

So I used "self leveling compound" to level this.

This is it. This bag weighs something like 50 pounds. I also preped things like bucket, brush, and so on.

Do you see the power drill with mix hook attached? This equipment is REQUIRED, if you are to do the same thing. (yes, it is blocked by the bucket. bad picture... wasn't really thinking when taking the picture)

what you need to do is to put the compound and 1.5 gallon of water into the bucket and mix them thoroughly. But you got do mix this in less than 2 minutes. This is where you use the power drill.

After 2 minutes, this compound will start getting hardened. So you need to pour and spread this on the floor. Then even this out with your deck brush. This is what it should look like.

In 10 minutes it hardened like hard lubber. by 60 minutes, it turned white and it was as hard as concrete,

Now that the base is level, I will put plywood floor the next.

Playing with water

2009-08-05T22:43:00.000-07:00

I took my family to a lake today.

We went to "San Luis Reservoir State Recreation Area", which is roughly 90 minutes away from where I live.

Here:

View Larger Map

Even though we are in the middle of summer, it was empty. Well, it was a week day after all. So what do you expect, I guess.

We took our dog along and we had a blast!

Koko swimming for the first time in his life.

We took a small recreational boat called "WalkerBay". You can either row or sail this boat.

My boys were rowing this boat, but it was pretty windy out there and they got pushed away very very far in very little time.

See the small boat in the back of the dog?

The boat became as small as

peanuts

in no time.

I was like "oh crap" and went to rescue the boys.

I am so glad I swam competitively for years when I was younger.

I got to the boat in a while, got on it and row it back to the shore. But wind was strong and was against us. It took us good half an hour to get back.

Then we played with the dog, played ukulele, had some snacks, swam some more, so on and so forth, but now I wanted to sail. So I rigged up Walkerbay.

Then I sailed out to the water but the wind was even harder than when I rescued my boat.

I haven't sailed for 2 years or so, so I ended up sailing left and right like Dr. Seuss

and eventually

capsized the boat.

Furthermore, I got so much water in the boat that I was not able to sail back to the shore, and ended up being rescued by nearby jet skier.

Well, so much for the fatherly authoritarian figure.

All in all, we had a blast!! It was probably the best day in 2009!

Removing floor

2009-08-03T12:02:00.001-07:00

Since no dead bodies were discovered from underneath the floor, I took out rest of the floor board, and the structure underneath it. They were not just screwed on but also glued together, and were extremely difficult to take them apart.

Once I got the plywood off, I cut all the studs with chain saw and threw them out of Window.

I am like 80% done here.

The pieced on left and right sides were connected into the walls... so I just removed them with force.

Me creaming "Hahaha" with Joy!

Now I need to decide what the hell I am going to do with all the junk I just produced.

From Japanese room to western room

2009-08-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

We have a very strange Japanese room in our house. The previous owner of our house has built it himself.

This Japanese room is on a raised floor and we just never really use it. The ceiling is too low because of the raised floor. The sliding doors are not really Japanese in any way you look at it. It just look very... FAKE.

So I decided to convert this room to be a normal living room with very large holdable door in between.

The first thing first. Cleaning up.

Then removed the sliding doors. This already gave us the sense of openness. I like it!

Removing molding with crowbar.

Then remove the rails of the sliding doors.

This was a lot of work, at this was screwed in with so many screws. All of them were buried with wood dowel. So i dug them out with chisel. It was quite a hassle to get them out.

But the real hard work was was above your head.

When the rails are removed, the room looks a LOT bigger.

Then I started to remove the floor with crowbar also.

About half way there,

I managed to get them all off, so I meant to call it done for the day...

But my wife goes:

妻が、

"What if there is a dead body hidden under neath??"」

She is all worked up and worried about it. So I decided cut out some holes and look below the floor.

Well, there was NO DEAD BODY.

But I guess she can now sleep well knowing that there is no dead body below the floor.

I am really beat, so would sleep really well also.

Pubic Hair Removal

2009-07-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

I find it hard to believe, but according to the following web sites, the ladies in Europe are shaving off or permanently removing their pubic hair.

Hair today Gone Tomorrow

Here is another one.

Pubic Hair Shave Fashion – What's Hot?

If you google Google "pubic hair removal trend", you will see shit load of web pages on this topic.

So I must assume that this is true.

According to the link I posted on the top, about 50% of the ladies are shaving off their pubic hair completely.

Some even spend thousands of dollars and remove their pubic hair permanently using laser device.

This is also a trend in the United States and some parents give "pubic hair removal" to their teenage girls as birthday present.

OK. Whatever.

What really throws me off is the guys removing their pubic hair.

WHY??

Do you want your dick to look like 10 year old's?

I just don't get it.

Nerf Recon CS-6 modification

2009-03-29T19:18:00.000-07:00

I modified Nerf Recon CS-6.

I really like this gun, but only the drawback is that you can only shoot streamline dart. So I made 3 modifications to that gun so to allow it to shoot any type of darts.

Here is the video of it.

If you like the painting on this gun here is the page for it.

Nerf Recon CS-6 Camouflage Paint

Menuett on Uke - Anna Magdalena

2009-03-27T16:54:00.001-07:00

I played Menuet in G - Lover's concerto played on ukulele. The ukulele I am using is concert size uke and it is made by Ceniza T&K. This is really nice uke and I highly recommend if anyone is looking for a excellent concert size uke.

The Beatles "Yesterday" Cover

2009-03-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

I bought Shure SM58 micrpphone recently. This is supposedly a legendary microphone. I was so sold.

It is so legendary that it is even on wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shure_SM58

So I used this instead of Blue Snowball USB microphone and recorded "Yesterday" on Ukulele.

I think it actually do sound better.

But ukuelele sound is too small. I think I need preamp between the mic and computer.

Hi-Tech toilet Seat

2008-12-21T22:24:00.000-08:00

I have not made any youtube video for a while, so I made one for a change.

It is about this Hi-Tech Toilet seat that I bought recently.

Very Silly video. Hope you guys like it.

Rewiring power cords on the garage ceiling

2008-09-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

I spent half of my day rewiring power cords on my garage ceiling.

There where so much power cords on my garage ceiling, I guess the previous owner of the house these cables are making the garage look uglier than needs to be. So I rewired them all through my attic, so my ceiling look little more organized and cleaner.

This was how it look before rewiring.

From Dry wall

This is how it looks now:

From Dry wall

Much better, isn't it? I am planning to hang my boat on the ceiling soon.

Coca cola Refrigerator

2008-09-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for a small refrigerator to be added to my garage.

I wanted the one with glass window in the front door, so you can see inside, and it's got to be either cute or cool or both.

I finally found one.

From Gadgets

When you look from the side, you can see a coke bottle drawn in white.

This is more on cute side than cool, but I like it.

From Gadgets

There is a handle on the top.

From Gadgets

It comes with car adater as well, so you can take it on your trip. I have a feeling that I will be taking this around more often than not,.

You can get this from amazon.com.

Broken Window Theory

2008-09-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of "Broken Window Theory"?

According to the theory, when a broken window is left un-repaired, it sends the message that nobody cares about the broken widnow. Pretty soon more windows will be broken, there will be graffiti all over the place and neighborhood will quickly turn itself to a ghetto.

I guess this theory can be applied in may different ways, such as one student looking at porn during class.

Camouflage paint on Nerf Dart Tag Blaster

2008-09-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

I've done Camouflage paint on Nerf Dart Tag Blaster.

This gun is super easy to disassemble. Painting is easy as well. If you want to get familiar with how Nerf revolver gun such as Maverick works, this is a good gun to practice with.

If you want to combat with your friends using Nerf guns, this is also the most practical gun. Here is what I've done with it.

Kitchen Renovation Project: installing Range Hood

2008-08-27T20:22:00.001-07:00

We started installing the range hood on Sunday morning. If we don't get done today, we will be in trouble.

We worked in the attic first. First, we cut out the space where range hood was going to fit. Then We cut out the beam that was going to be on our way, then installed two new beams that would also support the range hood. But there was no head space at where we had to work at, so we had to be on our stomach the whole time to get this done.

There were bunch of glass wools exposed everywhere. So I placed some pieces of plywood to cover them up and got on the plywood and started working, but using the hand saw whole being on your stomach was not fun at all.

As soon as I was done with cutting, then I started installing the 2 x 6s which will support the range hood. The place was so narrow with existing chimney there. We could not even use drill driver to get the screws in. So I had to tighten all the screws with my hand tool only, while lying on my stomach still. I was so sick of being in this position.

Finally finished this miserable work. The 2 pieces of wood yon can see are the new beams.

Then we had to cut out part of the chimney and joint with the flexible one to it would go into the new range hood properly. Then we placed support frame. Again, there was not enough space in the support frame to use power tools, so we had to screw in 4 big screws to mount the support frame to the beams we just installed. It was really, really hard.

By then, we started driving kids to help us out. Somebody had to hold the support frame still while at least 2 screws are placed to mount the support frame. It was heavier than it looks. This process felt like endless process.

Then we added lower support frame.

We stared to work on installing the chimney cover, and started wiring range hood. The boys still had energy left, but my wife and I were totally exhausted,

We had more screws to go, but it was well past 7:00pm. so we went out to get something to eat, We resumed the work around 8:00pm.

At 9:30pm:

We are DONE!!!

I was so worked up that I just could not fall asleep.

Glad it's over now.

I like working DIY stuff since was a low teen,But this was the most challenging work ever.

But, hey, it looks really cool. I am glad we did it.

You can slice a bread with MacBook Air

2008-08-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

I had no idea.... you can actually slice a piece of bread with MacBook Air.

I must say this guy is either creative or crazy, or both.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=549457&page=5#post6100113

I don't know if I want to spend $1800 for a bread knife that's really difficult to use.

I think Apple should add stuff like can opener, screw drivers, measure, nail clipper, etc etc to turn MacBook Air into multi-Tool computer.

Kitchen Renovation Project: Removing Cabinet

2008-08-25T08:33:00.001-07:00

So now that I got the island range hood, I decided to get started on this. Well... the problem was that once I got started on this, there was no turning back. I even would not be able to use the kitchen again unless I finish the installation of the new range hood.

On top of it, I only had this Saturday and Sunday to work on this. I'd better finished this in 2 days or else I was going to be really screwed.

If you compare this existing cabinet to my size, you can see how big it was. I thought it out before I got started, and I created a stand with 2 x 4 studs to be place right under neath of the cabinet, This way, even if anything happens, I know I am going to be safe and would protect the burners.

I started off with removing all the cabinet doors.

I removed the range hood, all the doors, ethernet cable and TV cable that were coming to this cabinet.

Then I removed the chimney and lastly, I started removing the screws that were attaching this cabinet to the wall and the ceiling.

But....

This cabinet did not come off!!

Eventually, I discovered that on top of all the screws, there are structaul support between the cabinet and the wall, which really attached the cabinet to the wall very firmly. Removing that was another major work!!

I eventually managed to get it out.

The kitchen seem so big now.

I ended using whole day Saturday on removing this. When I finished all the work, it was getting dark outside.

The next day was hopefully to be the last day to work on this kitchen renovation project.

Emergency Ass wipe

2008-08-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

Have you guys been in a situation where you really got to take #2, and ran to the restroom, do your thing, then find out that there is no toilet paper.

I guess you could sacrifice your $20 bill and wipe your ass with it, or hope that your ass is dry and you don't need to wipe your ass, and just pull up your underwear.

Well, over 20 years ago, my father told me how to wipe your ass with very small piece of paper. Never actually tried it, but this is how it works.

Have fun and good luck to you if you ever have to do this for real.

Kitchen Renovation Project: Buying Island range hood

2008-08-23T22:45:00.001-07:00

I spent quite a bit of time in picking the right range hood for my island kitchen.

The first consideration was the size. I did not know but there are generally 2 sizes to range hood, either 30' or 36". The one which was currently installed was 36", so I decided to go with 36".

The next thing was the design. There aren't whole a lot to choose from. Basically, there were 2 types to choose from. One was entirely made out of stainless steal. The other type had hood made with glass and the chimney part was made with stainless steal.

Price. It was all over the map. Some are in mid 400's and some are over $2000. I did really extensive research on this and ended up picking up this one. It was sold for $750.

I placed the order. I was expecting to take at least a week to get to me, but in 2 days, it was delivered to my house!

So I decided to get to the "real" work on 8/16. This is the last weekend before the kids get back to school and things get very busy again. Got to finish this on the weekend.

Kitchen Renovation: Installing Ethernet

2008-08-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

Before I was able to begin remodeling my kitchen, I first had to relocate my wireless access point. Why? Because the wireless access pointed was sitting right on the top of kitchen cabinet that I was looking at removing. The wireless AP was where the red circle is in the below picture.

I decided to take this as an opportunity and reroute my Ethernet cable to go to other cabinet.

So I got into the attic. The Attic was bigger and wider than I had expected and easy to work at. It was more difficult to identify the exact location of the kitchen cabinet that I was planning on installing the wireless AP. I took very precise measurement of the location in my kitchen area and mapped it over to the attic and nailed the location.

Another pain was to put cat5 connector to this cat5 cable. There are 8 different cables within the cable.

Then this Ethernet cable come out to the small cabinet above the refrigerator. There are 2 cabinets and one on the left is where it is at.

I got the power from the power plug for the refrigerator.

Now the wireless access point and all the cables that goes to it are all hidden and the space look bit more cleaner without any visible cables.

Now it is time to select a range hood that I would like to install.

Painting garage walls

2008-08-20T19:11:00.001-07:00

Now that I am done with applying compound, I have moved onto painting my garage walls. The color that I applied is called "Swiss Coffee" .... it is just a white paint with slight bit of yellow mixed.

I used 2 paint rollers and 1 sponge brush.

My wife helped me out big time and it went FAST.

Munching on a piece of browny while painting.

This is before drywall was applied:

This is with painted drywall:

The next place to work on is the garage floor. Not sure what I am going to do yet.

Kitchen Renovation Project

2008-08-19T20:35:00.001-07:00

Since I bought my current house, I've been wanting to install island style range hood. I got an island kitchen and I think it would make my kitchen look like ones you see on the food channels or something.

Here is my current kitchen looks like:

I took this picture a few days after I moved into this house. The the cabinet right above the kitchen counter has the range hood built-in. but I just did not like the way this cabinet looked. It looked heavy and blocked the sunlight from the window to the kitchen, making the kitchen look dark and dull. I've been wondering if I can convert this to something like below:

So I kicked off my kitchen renovation project and just completed it. I will be posting some details of this project

8/10/2008 Ethernet cable installation
8/13/2008 Buying the island range hood
8/16/2008 Removing the range hood and the cabinet
8/17/2008 Installing new range hood

Stay tuned!

M-Audio Studiophile AV 40 Powered Speakers

2008-07-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

I just did not like the audio quality from my iMac 24" built-in speakers, so I got this pair and I am loving it.

I am not much of an audio person, so I don't know whether the sound quality of this speaker is good or great. But compared with what I have and what I know of, I think this pair of speakers rocks for its price. I highly recommend this pair of speakers for those who are looking at improving their computer audio quality without spending too much money.

2008-07-26T22:50:00.001-07:00

now that I am done with putting drywall in my garage, I've worked on applying joint compound today.

All I got to do is to cover up the joints and screw holes with the compound.

I've read in some place that mixing the compounding just right can be quite tricky, so I bought pre-mixed compound.

I worked on it last Sunday and today (the following Saturday) and got it done. My wife helped big time. If she didn't help, there was no way I could have finished this today.

Here are some pictures.

Before applying compound:

After applying compound:

Before applying compound:

After applying compound:

It seem little messier but the wall joint should now be all covered up and not noticeable. Will see how it goes when I am done with painting.

If you want to try doing this yourself, I highly recommend that you get putty knives in different width. Don't be so cheap. Least get fairly narrow one to work on details and get wide one to get flat, even surface. Also get in-corner and out-corner putty knives. You can get the very clean, sharp corners with those knives.

I will work on the painting next. Will see how it goes.

Nerf N-Strike Maverick

2008-07-23T22:37:00.000-07:00

I modified this Nerf N-Strike Maverick and posted on youtube. This gun is not all that easy to disassemble, but not too difficult at all. You can get this pretty much anywhere, this is fun to play even as is. I highly recommend this toy gun for all boys in any age.

I did 3 different mods on this.

The 1st mod is the paint. I left silver pieces as is and painted everything else to be either dark green or gun metallic. I used Tamiya spray paint. Tamiya has very wide selection of colors, but their paint stink quite a bit.

The 2nd modification is is to make the cylinder pop out modification. This allows you to load the gun faster.

Before the mod: This comes out just far enough to load 1 bullet at a time.

After the mod: Now the cylinder pops out all the way.

The 3rd mod is the removal of the air restrictors, but I don't have any photos of it.

Here is my Youtube video:

Nerf Recon CS-6 Camouflage Paint

2008-07-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

I posted a video on how to do a Camouflage paint on Nerf Recon CS-6. This came out to be pretty cool.

This is how the gun look like before painting it.

and this is how I did it. Enjoy!

Swiss-Tech Utility Knife

2008-07-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

I've been carrying Victorinix swiss army knife on my keychain for the last 20 years or so. but I've lost one recently, so I replaced it with this Swiss-Tech Utility Knife.

It is really about the size of your car key and once you hang it on your keychain, you'd forget that you are carrying a utility tool in your pocket.

This is how the key looks like when you split it open to use it.

It got a knife blade, flathead driver, precision driver with Philip and flathead, and a bottle opener. It was more useful than I had expected. A thing I liked most about it is that you don't feel that are carrying a utility tool at all.

What I did not like was that the lack of scissors. I was so used to a swiss army with scissors that it simply missed it.

I'd recommend this to anyone who likes new cool stuff and who does not care for a pair of small scissors on your utility knife.

Self made Attic (Loft?)

2008-07-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

After I made the red racks, I've realized that I needed more storage space. So I created a loft in my garage by myself.

My long term goal is not to create just a clean, organized garage, but create a "comfortable space that would make me want to sit, relax, have some coffee and music ."

Only the extra storage space I could find was the space directly above my head, and so here is what I did.

This is how it looked like.

So I got some 2x 8's installed extra beams. Then I got some plywood and nailed them onto the beams.

As of 3 weeks ago, in mid-June-ish, I finished installing all the plywood except for the space where I was going to install an attic ladder.

So I got the attic ladder, took it home and it is....

HUGE!!

There was no way I was going to get it up there myself, so I got help from my colleague at work and carried it up to my attic. Installation of the attic ladder was very straight forward. I've created temporary support for the ladder with some extra 2 x 4's and nailed to the beams.

This is how it looks like now. When the ladder is up, it is kinda like this.

and when you get the ladder down, it looks like this.

I got more stuff stored up there now, and that means I got some extra space in my garage now.

This is the picture of the garage before I got the loft space.

This is how it looks like now.

Can you see the difference?

Garage rack

2008-07-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

I moved into my current house about 4 months ago. The "house" part got organized pretty quickly, but the garage was a mess for the longest time. The previous house I lived had a built-in shelves, but not this house. So I spent a few weekends building some racks to get my garage organized.

I really need a clean, organized garage so I and my boys can actually do some DIY stuff in it. Not only do I want it clean and organized, but I actually want a garage where I would want to spend some time there with coffee, music, couch and maybe a plant or two.

So this was my first step to my ideal garage.

I made the racks with woods, kept the window part open and painted them red to to give an energized look and feel.

How does it look?

I still got a long way to go, but the space is now finally organized a bit. Good enough resume my Nerf gun mods and stuff like

Garmin StreetPilot i5 Portable GPS Navigator

2008-07-16T22:23:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine had black & white version of this navigation system and I was laughing at him for wasting his money on what seemed to be an useless gadget. Boy, was I wrong!

I bought this Garmin StreetPilot i5 Portable GPS Navigator a few years ago and I am loving it. It is small, operates on battery, very intuitive design, has built-in US map, got color display and is cheap!!

Several of my frirends bought the very same model and they are all happy with it. If you want to grab a GPS that get you from point A to point B and is very reasonably priced, I'd recommend this StreetPilot i5 Portable.

Airzooka

2008-07-16T20:16:00.001-07:00

I love this silly toy. I bought this a few years ago and I ended up buying 2 more, 1 for my brother and 1 for my colleagues in Japan. It is simple, harmless and you never run out of ammos. Where can you buy this toy? Just as anything else, you can find this on Amazon.com. this comes in 4 or 5 different colors. I bought orange, green and black so far, but I like black the best.

I made a video of this and posted it on youtube. Enjoy.